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André Schweiger, Raoul Schweizer

Awarded

André Schweiger / Raoul Schweizer

Jewellery collection 'Goldschluck'

Jewellery and Objects

Jury report

Swallow by swallow to the ultimate experience
Why de­stroy valu­able things in the di­ges­tive tract? Jew­ellery or Con­cept Art? There is scarcely a jew­ellery cre­ation that trig­gers such vi­o­lent ar­gu­ments as 'Gold­schluck' (Goldswal­low) by the graphic artist Raoul Schweizer and the gold­smith André Schweiger. To­gether they have de­signed a jew­ellery line and a highly styled pre­sen­ta­tion show­case that stands our es­tab­lished sys­tem of val­ues com­pletely on its head. Some­thing that we used to wear proudly on our necks or wrists we are now sup­posed to in­gest: real gold, with a shop value be­tween 500 and 2000 francs. It can be sup­plied in twelve ex­quis­itely de­signed cap­sule forms, of­fered in high-grade, clin­i­cally pure pack­ag­ing.
The two de­sign­ers aver that 'swal­low­ing gold' is a new rit­ual that is al­most like a sub­sti­tute drug. But is it re­ally pos­si­ble to de­sign rit­u­als on a draw­ing-board now? The ad­mirable thing about this idea, which has been rad­i­cally thought through, is that it is hardly pos­si­ble to de­cide how much irony there is in this am­biva­lent pro­ject. In any case there is no lack of hu­mour and in­ven­tive­ness in the high-fa­lutin, me­dia-slanted, PR texts, in­struc­tion leaflets and prod­uct names. So for ex­am­ple we leave be­hind the all-too-fa­mil­iar 'No. 5' from Chanel and ad­mire the new fetish cre­ated by Schweiger and Schweiger, promis­ing us a ver­i­ta­ble gold rush: 'Schnell Nr. 5', that is 22 grams of real gold in rose­wa­ter, just wait­ing to be swal­lowed.
The de­sign­ers sug­gest that 'Gold­schluck' can be con­sumed, with­out wor­ry­ing about the wag­ging moral fin­ger. Given the hunger and mis­ery in the world, it is easy to ob­ject to such friv­o­lous as­ser­tions. Even so, the in­tel­li­gently con­trived 'Gold­schluck' pro­ject makes such a rad­i­cal and ex­pressly provoca­tive con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate about our in­creas­ingly erod­ing per­cep­tions of val­ues.
Peter Stohler

Biography

André Schweiger
Born in
1968
Education 
Goldschmied/Schmuckgestalter

Raoul Schweizer
Born in
1968
Education
Grafiker

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